Posted
by
kdawson
on Monday January 01, 2007 @04:08PM
from the losing-business-the-old-fashioned-way dept.

firenurse writes to point out a story in The Inquirer about how one small business switched to Ubuntu. It describes a maddening comedy of errors, a series of circular screw-ups among Microsoft, HP, and a RAID vendor. From the article: "You never quite wrap your head around how anti-consumer Microsoft's policies are until they bite you in the bum. Add in the customer antagonistic policies of its patsies, HP in this case, and vendors like Promise, and you have quite a recipe for pain. Guess what I did today?"

I imagine going the Linux route as a smaller business or individual is going to help a lot -- you have tons of free forums and enthusiasts to help you. In working at companies that used MS heavily, I can see a pattern--the bigger you are, the better service you get. For example, a huge computer chips manufacturer I worked at had several of their employees *on site* at Microsoft. A university I worked at - paying about $250,000/year for a site-wide software license - got less help, but still had inside contacts at Microsoft. And then you've got small/new businesses who may get an email a couple weeks later, if they're lucky.

Let me preface this by saying I ran almost every testing final release of Fedora. A couple of days ago I was trying to get Slash running on Core 6. A friend of mine said I should really try Ubuntu. We were on IRC, so i couldn't actually hear the tone of his voice, but it seemed to me be a pretty strong emphasis. Like "Try Ubuntu you idiot.":).. Well I did. I went and grabbed the 6.0.6 Dapper Server release. The install was painless. Once I was running there were several things I needed in order build stuff. Namely, build-essential, and things like that. Also Cpan was lets just say, interesting to get right, but it always is.
So anyway. It took 3 minutes to get an apache 3.x series server with mod_perl up. Mysql was a breeze. Once the server was up, I decided to build scoop, just to get better. This is the first thing I had ever tried to build as far as a fairly powerful weblog product. The result? It works! If you doubt me, just click on my url. Now, i was just building scoop to learn. Not really gonna use it I don't think.
The point is, Ubuntu rocks, and the longer term support from 6.0.6 is what I need if im gonna be doing some development. And the kernel aint half bad either.:P

This was an office with 4 workstations. They needed a place to dump files for access - not a server. He's gonna automate their backup to DVD (although I don't know why he needed the size disks he was using for 4 PCs - maybe he intends to keep a LOT of backups? Maybe it's video stuff?)

What branch office with 4 PCs is gonna pay God knows what for a Microsoft server license?

Whether he has run into these problems once, or a thousand times doesn't make the nature of the problems any less asinine. As for 'don't do that', I've been doing it for over a decade with great results. I explain the pro/con points with my client and implement. And it works. Any consultant who has to trust vendor support FOR anything is just asking for trouble, because they WILL get screwed eventually.

You're quite right: the solution he chose was non-optimal from the start. Why is he using desktop hardware to build a server? What has he used in the past? Why didn't he do more research? Clearly a 'professional' would not have made these mistakes. Obviously it is possible to deploy a properly functioning Windows server to do what the guy wanted to do.

But that's not exactly the point of the article, I think. This was a rather small-scale installation, and he (with whatever knowledge, skills and money he had available) found it *impossibly frustrating* to get a Windows server running, while it was quite straight-forward to get a Linux server running.

This 'small-time market' is huge in aggregate. There are thousands of small businesses, home businesses, stores, etc. that have need of some kind of server. They don't have the money/time/expertise to set up a professional Windows server... but amazingly they do have the ability to set up a Linux server! Why? Because FLOSS empowers the user, is community-based, and doesn't impose artificial restrictions.

I've had similar experiences. Some years ago I was setting up a small server for a lab (file sharing, web-hosting, etc.). We had no need of a 'professional' system so I just set it up myself. First with Windows (didn't work out very well) and then I scrapped the system and used Linux instead. Even with my limited (at the time) knowledge of Linux, I was able to get a powerful, functional, and stable server system (still running, has never crashed). It was certainly as professional as it needed to be for our purposes.

The point is that FLOSS empowers the 'little guy' to get something working without hassles, whereas proprietary solutions are usually focused on the 'big guys' and create artificial barriers to actually doing what you want to do!

Windows is (relatively) easy (at least as easy as Linux) to setup and administer.Windows is not (always) easy to install, and never has been, unless you happen to be lucky with the hardware - in which case everything just works.

s/Windows/Linux

They are about the same in terms of install. Some hardware Linux will be a breeze, and Windoze will be a bitch, other hardware visa-versa. In either case you really need a second net connected machine to get help and download stuff and with a CD burner and (especiall

OK, enough. Yes, grandmas do install servers. I've got four beautiful grandbabies and a Linux webserver which I set up almost 3 years ago. I have been running Linux on my desktop for about 5 years, I actually remember 'dependency hell'.

I understand that this phantom 'grandma' is a stereotypical inexperienced user, but its a new year, so lets pick someone else to be the idiot. Like blondes or Republicans. Thanks.

Actually, this works just fine. Explorer.exe crashes quite a bit on one of our development servers thanks to a crappy explorer shell extension some coder installed. Explorer.exe just crashes, all windows disappear, and you have to Ctl-Atl-Del to start a new explorer process. However, no "server" operations are affected by these crashes. The web services, file service, DB, etc. all just keep on running.

It's better than that.The box he was shipping to his client originally had a 40GB hard drive in it, which immediately makes it a couple of years old. He's probably recycling an old box he had lying around.

Nothing intrinsically wrong with that, but if it's going out to the clients site to host important stuff, you probably want nice shiny new hardware rather than some 3 year old PC with an almost burnt-out PSU and zero warranty support (which means that you won't be able to get the parts to turn a dead box

"40GB hard drive in it, which immediately makes it a couple of years"You overestimate the shite the bigname vendors put in their entry level systems. A low end HP 'server' can ship with an 80GB drive today, I wouldnt be surprised if 40GB drives were still shipping a few months ago.

The fact that they're actually selling machines with components that have been rare in retail for quite some time makes one wonder where they're getting the parts. Refurbished junk, perhaps? Guess that would be good for the margin

Big name vendor + non-supported hardware. Any system consultant with a few years of experience should be able to tell you "don't do that".

Anyone who confuses "support" with proprietary software is not working in their client's best interests. Proprietors drop software maintenance to get users on the upgrade treadmill. Proprietors ostensibly act motivated by profit, but users can find computers that do their job well after the hardware is no longer profitable. Consultants ought to promote the use of free software drivers and firmware (or, preferably, no firmware needed at all) so that their clients can leverage the talents of a free market of developers to improve and maintain the software needed to make all hardware work with any system. Separating users from their freedom is not fiscally sound for users.

Microsoft lost this chain for sure on the server side. If it doesn't think their brain dead policies are costing them money, I am proof positive that they are

Unless he somehow wrangled a refund out of HP for the copy of XP he didn't use, then Microsoft still got paid, thus their "braindead policy" isn't costing them a nickel. They're just making money on a copy of Windows they don't need to support.

On the one hand this guy describes the branch office as "no big deal, done it a thousand times before",

Unless he somehow wrangled a refund out of HP for the copy of XP he didn't use, then Microsoft still got paid, thus their "braindead policy" isn't costing them a nickel. They're just making money on a copy of Windows they don't need to support.

Two problems with this, the first is that even if they were to get a refund it is HP that would pay for it not MS I'd imagine as I wouldn't be supprised if OEMs that have volume discounts for Windows has to pay for each PC sold. The second issue is once a client

Looks like the poster had a 'real' Windows CD, but the license key he was trying to use was for the brain dead OEM version. Been there, done that. The trick is to transform a real CD into what HP (and all the other hardware vendors) should be including - a Windows install CD that works with the key on the sticker.

So look at the 'pre-installed' media, find the c:\i386\setupp.ini file that should be on the HDD. Build yourself a Windows install CD using NLite (because you should also trim th fat as long as you are going to be in there, along with adding drivers, security patches, etc) from some other source. Replace the setupp.ini file and it will use the OEM key. This won't turn an OEM version into an activation free volume version, but you can go the other way.

Did I mention nlite lets you add drivers to the install media? (grin) A must for those who have SATA drives.

First of all, its called using the right tool for the right job. When you buy an OEM desktop you get OEM windows, you *CAN* buy the CD for an extra 10-20 bucks with most places and if you register as a reseller you can get much more. (If you're a microsoft partner you can just sell another license through your partner advantage program and use your own cd's/media for install) (free to join program). Finding Media is probably the easiest job of any techie.

Secondly, don't use Windows XP to be a server. It really isn't much more and sometimes cheaper to get a system pre-installed with SBS 2003 R2 and you get Exchange and other features built in not to mention a true comparison against Linux resource/functionality wise.

Terribly inaccurate and to say the least a very inept technician and company at work here.

My biggest selling "managed service" for small/medium sized businesses isn't my linux solution but my sbs 2003 r2 solution because for most people it not only saves money but provides tons of features from easy to configure remote access to sharing in sharepoint to cenralized ad administration/logins/access restrictions to built in exchange and with the advanced version sql server access.

I would never sell someone a desktop as a server solution simply because your selling yourself short. If cost savings was an issue buy a refurb server system and put whatever linux you want on it.

Ah yes. SBS. The lovely "server" from Microsoft that has all "services" rolled together. As in "you can't uninstall and reinstall a broken service without reloading the entire OS". The one where a slight problem with one service affects everything on the box. No thanks. I'll stick with W2K3 STD.

It really depends on what he's using it for, doesn't it? If it's just to use as a simple file and print server, or as a machine on the network to host a third party application that many small businesses tend to use, then why in hell's name is he going to fork out more money for SBS with a ton of things he'll never use and some things he'll never be able to use properly (Terminal Services springs to mind) and where he can't get more than one on the same network? Yes, you guessed it, that's an artificial Microsoft restriction in SBS *slaps forhead*.

I have been bitten by every single problem mentioned in that article. Bad OEM "revogery disks" and MS licensing restrictions that prevent one from using an alternative install disks are one of the biggest single problems facing those of us that support very small businesses professionally. Say what you want about Dell... at least they include real windows install disks.

However, I have to question the judgement of the author. First of all, what kind of consultant deploys branch offices "weekly" and didn't know about these problems in advance? Anyone with much experience would know about (a) how difficult it is to move windows from one storage subsystem to another, (b) that HP uses bad recovery disks, and (c) that RAID installs require a floppy.

In addition, I question the use of Linux in this situation... perhaps it was his only way out of a bad recommendation to a client, but the problem is that there are *very* few Linux-savv consultants servicing businesses this size. For this reason alone I don't deploy Linux solutions... I can't find subcontractors who can back me up when I'm on vacation or sick, and should I stop working with a client, I don't want to leave them high and dry. Most consultants I know replace Linux servers with windows because they simply can't support it.

Finally, there's a much better way to do what he's trying to do: a NAS appliance. If all you need is some shared storage, printer sharing and the occasional backup, one of the many small business NAS devices out there (Infrant [infrant.com], Snap / Adaptec [snapappliance.com], Buffalo [buffalotech.com], etc...) will do so with greater reliability and less complexity than a PC-based server.

That depends very much on the kind of people working in that company. If they're not too computer illetarate, it shouldn't be a problem. Linux isn't that complicated.You can easily maintain it yourself.I've worked in two companies that both switched to Linux. And after some initial setup problems, that was in both cases a succes. It is a steep learning curve, that is true. But the big advantuge of Linux is that it requires much less maintenance then Windows.

I know, it's unbelievable... but I'm talking about consultants to really small businesses (30 seats). These are not server-centric sites... typically they have a single server, if any.This space is *completely* owned by Windows. In the past three years in my business, I've seen two total customers that had any Linux at all, and in one case it was a software engineering firm that was using Linux for a CVS server (not a typical small business).

The article says that you will not receive neither XP installation disk nor a valid XP Product Key. All HP hardware that I have been using have had a rescue CD set, vanilla XP installation CD (although, the CD has HP label) and a Product Key sticker glued to the machine. The Key works with the installation CD, but the activation process has to be done over the phone.

This is the situation in Finland. Does HP have different policies in other countries? I'm just curious to know if there just are different policies in different countries or is this some completely new policy that HP started using just recently?

My Compaq laptop is similar to yours... the old one (pre-merger) had restore CDs that reinstalled everything, complete with the crap that I never wanted like AOL. The new(er) one came with a vanilla XP CD that installed the OEM version of XP Home. No activation required, doesn't even ask for the CD key, though there is a sticker on the bottom of the lappy.All the drivers are included on a 2nd CD, and there's a 3rd CD with the crap I don't want, like AOL, MSN, MS Works, etc. etc. etc.

Ok who else doesn't believe the line: "It started out quite simply, a client needed to set up a small branch office, something I do almost every week.", from the article?

I have been a consultant (my own business) working exclsuively with small bussiness for quite some time & before I ever started doign that I'd have told him he was a frickin' moron. HP doesn't support other hardware on their _restore_ CD's, well friggin' DUH! Hey moron how can you not know this if you 'a client needed to set up a small branch office, something I do almost every week'. If you had you'd know this already and wouldn't have screwed with the HP disks at all & would know you need a real OS disk.

After that you blame Promise's CD... Yet lots of vendors do that... Hell lots of motherboard vendors do that! It's why I have a LS120 drive I use that is never installed in systems, but lets me get stuff loaded at that fun part of the install where I have to have a 'floppy type device' to load anything...

Really two things come to mind that sum up the solution to his whole problem: Either convince HP to customize a machine to your needs (and keep their support which you btw killed when modifying their box anyways and is the only real reason to buy from a OEM vendor anyways) or Build the darn box yourself so you can customize it as you want with a real OS CD! Problem solved.

It may be nice Linux 'solved' your problem, but your problem was caused by you for not already knowing what you were walking into.

The business didn't "switch to Ubuntu". That phrase implies that they suddenly stopped using any Windows systems. In fact, they made the much smaller step of converting their servers to Ubuntu. Linux has always been a much easier sell in serverland, because on servers you don't have all the application lock-in that makes it hard to get end users to give up Windows.

You haven't dealt with a lot of small business then. Quite a few applications need Windows servers, which have given me quite a few troubles in using Linux. QuickBooks and ProSeries (which I have worked around), Sage Business Works (which I haven't worked around yet, but run locally and copies on log off), some program that uses an Access backend (on a server I refuse to support because of the mistakes of the previous IT person), EagleSoft (NO workarounds), etc. I want all my servers to run Linux, unfortuna

At one time, my boss was as wedded to Microsoft as they come, mainly because that was all he knew. Over time, that view changed mainly because of the hoops we had to jump through as a small IT business doing things for SMBs, and the unbelievable expense for pointless things with an all Microsoft approach.

The licensing bollocks in the article of being squeezed into buying a full copy of XP, or Windows Server, not to mention the excruciating amount of time you spend wading through the treacle, is just the tip of the iceberg, and is not something I see in very many TCO studies;-).

The final straw was Terminal Services, which to this day, is the one thing that pisses me off just about the most with Windows and Windows Servers. You actually need to run a separate service, or even a separate Windows Server, just to track Client Access Licenses (which you pay for) so that users can get access to all their applications. Anything that goes wrong with TS is nearly always licensing related, and has nothing to do whatever with the software itself. The sole reason why this is as difficult as it is is because remote applications like this seriously threatens Microsoft's reliance and monopoly over fat clients, so they got in quick and closed what they saw as a loophole. Their approach is to then make the thin client approach just as expensive and more difficult. Well, f*** off. We wanted to spend our money on things that were going to make things better and actually get us ahead of the loser competition.

I know SBS is held up as this great white hope for IT in small businesses, but I find the whole thing so limiting that we can very rarely give a 'Yes' answer to a client without asking for several thousands of whatever currency you wish before we even start and disappearing for several weeks. I mention these problems we have had calmly to many Microsoft resellers and 'Gold Partner' IT companies and they get very visibly upset, because they just don't know what to say.

As a business, we then went off into a fantastic world of an Ubuntu server running separate VMware or Xen Virtual Machines, remote desktop applications using Nomachine's fantastic NX Server, and with no ridiculous CAL overhead where we could ditch Windows applications, SQL Ledger, Zimbra, Fedora Directory Server and many others. The whole set up we have internally does so much more than a Windows and Microsoft set up does, it just isn't believable.

No doubt I'll get some extremely witty and informative reply to this comment about how someone managed to bork their Grub and Ubuntu installation into not booting. Oh, I see we've already had one;-).

Another example of excellent reporting, that is if you like blaming Microsoft for every problem. As far as I am aware there is no Microsoft policy that prohibits the shipping of Windows CDs with the computers. It's just that the companies don't like them because they are a pain to support compared to restore discs.

All the blame here lies on one company, HP. They didn't ship them a Windows CD which would have fixed it right up. But any good computer tech would have had a Windows XP Pro OEM CD that they could have used to install the OS (Microsoft sends an entire album of current OEM CDs to partners). Sure you would have to call up to activate the OS, but it would have gotten him up and running.

The best strategy for a business is to start your small business with an IT department that can handle your IT infrastructure, and then expand it to what you need. Consultants have to hill-climb; they have to say, "There's a problem here, we'll fix it. If you find another problem (possibly exposed by this fix), call us again." Your own IT department should have documentation and experience with your network, so they know if they do X it will break Y but they can do Z to get Y working properly and move a

I tried it on 2 PCs recently. One was a piece of crap "all in one" Duron system that worked fine. The other was an Athlon 2400+ on an Asus motherboard. Couldn't get the sound or the NIC working and gave up after about 30 minutes. It's still pretty hit and miss for me.

Sound is always an issue, not so much because of Linux, but because if you're not expert in Linux, you can't tell WHICH of the three or four sound servers Linux provides is running as the default, and WHICH of them is being used by the media program you're running. Look at the system setup or the dmesg boot report and the config screens for Xine or whatever media program you're running. Usually, adjusting the programs to use the right sound server solves the problem.It's dumb, I know - why they don't marry

For the moderately near future, I don't see a linux distribution locking out a person from supporting it themselves like MS does (though getting support from your linux/hw vendor may be complicated by his actions). However, I do think the installers plan and execution was not good for a business install. Actually, it's not that good for home installs either.

One thing:

its patsies, HP

In this case, HP is not just being MS' patsy, they are serving their own interest. MS didn't request them cripple their customization, they crippled it themselves to encourage any upgrades to be HP supplied, not third party.

The key sentence where everything went to crap:

Out came the anaemic 40GB drive from one HP, and in when the Promise controller and two WD 200GB SATA drives.

In the first part, he drank the vendor kool-aid and got their customized XP install. That's a valid choice in and of itself. Then he grabbed a third-party controller card and expected the stuff HP provided to play nice with it. HP didn't want him to do that, they wanted him to buy a presumably much more expensive HP branded controller to do the same thing. HP's install CD not accomodating that is hardly a surprise, and hardly a MS decision. The different keys for retail and OEM reflect the different pricing tiers. .

If they are a particularly small business, not going with one vendor is a valid choice, but you best put it together via all-third-party parts and get a generic OEM windows disk. If you can get a no-windows discount on the HP system, and use that discount for a different license, you can go with a non-restricted install media set. You do, however, in this way accept a higher degree of risk (problem determination falls squarely on your shoulders, and your vendors may disagree with your conclusion and blame other parts..). If you run on thin margins and time is not uber-critical for systems, this may be the appropriate path

If you drink the vendor kool-aid and get their hardware and software, you've drunk the kool-aid and as a consequence, you ought buy from HP your upgrades. You can't expect something put together by them to work for hardware configurations they would explicitly not support. This is more expensive if you buy any significant number of upgrades, but that's the course you signed up for by implicitly restricting yourself to their install media. By mixing and matching, you get the negatives of above with respect to support (HP can blame the generic Promise chipped card, and vice-versa), but you pay more for the privilege of support that is compromised by the choice.

I'm a professional linux guy working for a hardware vendor. We invest a lot of time and money in making sure all our hardware works well for given linux distributions. I occasionally have to work with a customer who ultimately admits to third party options in the systems that usually end up the cause of their problem for reasons more purely technical than artificial CD key barriers. I'm a little defensive of this circumstance because even without artificial key measures introduced, this strategy can screw you over regardless of your software platform.

I don't go anywhere to do any work without the Ultimate Boot CD for Windows! As long as the system can support XP (older machines can't, so I have to use the older Boot CD which is DOS-based), I can boot XP anywhere and have numerous utilities available. In fact, my UBCDW has so many antivirus and antispyware utilities on it that I'm thinking of making a couple more CDs with different sets of utilities on it to do other things. I'd do a DVD version, but a lot of people still don't have DVD drives in their machines.

I'm going to add some utilities to several 2GB flash drives and eventually convert one of my older 60GB hard drives into an external USB inclosure and load it up with EVERYTHING - along with a boot CD to access it.

Then - bring it on! I've got over 1600 utilities that can pretty much handle any issue I'm likely to encounter (knock wood, tomorrow I'll run into one I can't...)

Gotta admit, though, the guy was screwed when there were no drivers on the Promise disk. And it is a pain that you can't use a vanilla XP install CD to replace system files in a Systems File Check (although I understand the security reasons for it) or do much of anything else except run a Restore Console.

I was helping a friend get set up with a new computer. It's a sweet, sweet box from HP: Athlon 4200+ X2 processor, 1GB RAM, DVD burner. It's an HP Pavilion a1647c-b [hp.com], and it cost US$900 (which included a nice widescreen LCD display with both analog and DVI inputs!). I upgraded it with a passively-cooled nVidia 7600GS graphics card, so it's now using the DVI input on the LCD display, and the display looks great.

I wanted to install Ubuntu on it, but I haven't done so yet. Here's why.

It turns out that the system doesn't come with an XP install CD. No surprise, Microsoft requires OEMs to provide "recovery disks". But it turns out that the system doesn't come with recovery disks either! It comes with a utility for burning a custom set of recovery disks. The manual says you are permitted to burn exactly one set of recovery disks.

It turns out that you need 18 blank CD-R disks, or 3 blank DVD+/-R disks, to burn your custom set of recovery disks! So I went home without installing Ubuntu.

The next day he bought a stack of DVD+R disks, and I went back. The recovery disk utility took a long time to burn the first disk, and then it said "verifying" and sat there, indicating 1% progress. So I left again without installing Ubuntu. He left it running and it never did finish.

So now he has a Windows system that he doesn't dare use, because if it gets messed up, there is no way to restore it. He told me he would call HP tech support but I haven't heard back from him.

By the way: it would have been easy to install Ubuntu before the first boot-up. I booted an Ubuntu CD and used it as a live CD, and looked over the hard disk without modifying it. Initially there was a 20GB partition and a whole bunch of empty space. On the first boot, the Windows system expanded the NTFS file system to fill the whole bunch of empty space. If I had just created a couple of partitions at the end of the empty space, I'm pretty sure that Windows would have left them alone, and then it would have been trivial to install Ubuntu. (Of course, if I had done that, I would have had a nagging worry that the recovery disk fiasco was somehow my fault. Because I didn't touch the machine before first boot, it's clear that the recovery meltdown has nothing to do with me.)

I was tempted to just grab a copy of XP and do a full re-install. But this particular system came with XP Media Center Edition, and I have no idea where I can get an install CD of XP MCE (or how much it would cost).

I'm half-tempted to buy one of these systems, though, because it was a good value for the money, and Ubuntu recognized all the hardware, right down to the flash card reader.

The difference here is that you were having LEGITIMATE TECHNICAL ISSUES, as opposed to issues created by pencil pushers. Every problem the guy ran into was caused by either a total lack of thought on the manufacturers end (exe and no drivers), or intentional/malicious limiation (F6 driver install disabled, Windows Key issues).

Not really. You've got two basic problems. The first is that grub didn't work the way it's supposed to. That's a technical problem. The second is that you weren't prepared for the first problem. That's either a failing on your part for not reading carefully, or Ubuntu for not recommending some basic precautions when doing something critical like a bootloader. I haven't read the install docs, so I can't point any fingers. The solution is fixable, either using a LiveCD or a 2K/XP boot disk.Now if Ubunt

My claim is that there was a lack of thought. I was right. Ubuntu did not recommend precautions when using GRUB. The download site did not recommend downloading a Live CD as well. To "highly recommend" GRUB as the "safe" option constitutes a lack of though.If I had been informed that GRUB's failure would brick my box, I would certainly have preferred booting the Linux partition by telling it to book from the Ubuntu CD at startup.

On the stuff I posted, I'm right. On the tangential issues you brought up,

Your computer is not "bricked" anymore than a car with a flat tire is bricked. You can either recover your windows MBR with a windows install disk, hell, borrow one, Or you can fix the grub install with a live CD/Flash drive. You are just being stubborn about this, no one listens to you because you have it set in your head that Linux is bad, and you need to tell everyone how bad it is.

My last debian install failed to configure grub, installing it to the MBR but nothing more. I made the lazy mistake of installing the final release using an older testing release of the netinstall cd I had downloaded earlier, and there was a change in where it put grub-install. So the system wouldn't boot after the debian install was complete. My solution was to figure out how to boot using the grub command line, which basically involved typing in exactly what ought to have been in the config file. After I

1) I see your point. Coming from your perspective you've been betrayed by GRUB and Ubuntu. I've had problems with GRUB in the past myself, and until recently have been a staunch supporter of LILO. Have you by chance tried picking that instead to see if it gives you better luck? Occasionally machines have firmware configurations or drive topology that GRUB still just doesn't seem to like. Its far more rare these days but still completely possible. Keep in mind you ARE using an operating system that was not pre-tested and pre-installed for the machine you're using. Unforseen complications can arise.

2) I'm only making a guess but it really *does* sound like you might have a bad harddrive. If the boot sector failed it really could have been working fine with windows for years until you tried to write something new to it, exposing the hardware failure by corrupting otherwise accessible data in the master boot record with a failed write. One way to check this would be to try re-installing windows of course, or any other distro/operating system.

3) I don't like Ubuntu either because its failed me the only two times I've tried it as well. Perhaps your machine is a "fringe case" like mine was. Issues and workarounds (or at least confirmation of non-working status) based on your motherboard's IDE/SCSI/SATA harddrive controller could exist online.

I'm sorry your attempt with Ubuntu didn't work (I had a similar problem with old hardware and the fix was to use LILO instead of GRUB, btw).

However what's interesting is the *differences* between your problems with Ubuntu and what TFA describes as problems with proprietary vendors. With the proprietary vendors, they basically said 'either you use our configuration or screw off'... The hardware, software, and so forth were all designed to work one single way, and if you want to deviate from that, you're on your own.

Your experience with Ubuntu was just the opposite: dozens of people (apparently) gave you lots of different suggestions for what might be wrong and how to fix it. It looks like in your case it didn't work out in the end, but it is certainly interesting how much free support you received for a product you didn't pay for.

b) Last time I checked, Ubuntu doubled as a live CD.So, like every wise guy that offered help, you failed to read the part where I said I did this at a time before they combined them.

You don't understand. Every Linux install CD is a live CD. Not all of them have pretty GUI desktops, but every single one of them is a Live CD. What Ubuntu recently did was put a pretty GUI desktop on their installer CD, but previous versions were a Live CD as well.

Let me quickly relate a recent experience. I installed Slackware on this machine a little while back. It took me two days, including one day to figure out how to set up Apache with a load of modules and Twiki. Kernel compiled, Apache compiled, ready to go.

More recently I had to install Windows XP Pro from an SP1 disk. It took me two days to set up Windows XP Pro with administrator and user accounts and get all my apps updated and working properly (or close enough with some apps running escalated privileges) in user mode.

My conclusion: Both Slackware and Windows are very difficult systems to build from scratch. If people had to install Windows themselves they would be as smart as Linux geeks.

Why didn't you post a link to the thread on the ubuntu forums where this whole discussion took place, as you did last time you ranted about this? Is it because you've finally realised that you acted like a complete wanker there? Here's a link [ubuntuforums.org].

I had a same error trying to get Ubunutu running, as far as I could figure when you run the installer the IDE drive your installing to has to be the primary master drive, try install onto a slave, GRUB error 15. Try install with a SATA drive still plugged in? GRUB error 15. Try to install onto a SATA with IDE drives plugged in? GRUB error 15. As soon as the installation is completed you can switch it back. The again with a debian installation I saw GRUB Error 15 & 18, on some old tired out machi

FYI, the Error 15 (File Not Found) is probably caused because GRUB (when running from inside Linux) has no way to work out which drive will be presented as 'drive 0' when GRUB is run during the boot process. The only real fix for this is to switch to an architecture with a decent pre-boot environment like Sparc, PowerPC, etc. The work-around is to correct the contents of/boot/grub/device.map and/boot/grub/menu.lst and then re-install GRUB.

Your computer wasn't bricked. It could boot, and work fine, just not from the source you were using. A bricked device is one that will not boot at all, or boots only to then fail in some spectacular way. Your use of the term in such a consistently erroneous fashion only marks you as a fool.

I'm sorry, man, I'm a REALLY patient person, but even I wouldn't help you unless you stopped being such a dick.

Does your incredibly snide and degrading tone get you far in life? Because it doesn't work on the internet. Maybe you think you're being witty or something but you just come across as an angry jerk.

in a decade of using linux I've never come across a more helpful and patient community than Ubuntu. If you ask questions politely and provide the information that's requested, instead of acting like you are smarter than everyone else and you don't think their question is relevant, you might find you get a little bit more useful information. Just a tip.

"Use a Live CD." Don't have one. "You mean you didn't burn that along with the install CD?" Didn't say to. "You mean you didn't try the install on a spare box first?" You're fucking kidding me, right? (This was before they combined them, geniuses.)

No offense, but you either skipped, or left out, the most important step of the entire procedure, which would be "Read the installation instructions.", and should go right before "Download install CD".

It's hardly fair to blame the software when you didn't read the directions.

This sounds familiar. I remember a post like this before and I checked the actual mailing lists and I remember you being a complete asshole as people tried to help you. You kept hurtling insults at people who were trying their best to help you and eventually they gave up figuring that you were merely trolling them and didn't really have a problem.

Okay, box is bricked. Luckily I have a computer from work and I go ask for help on forums.
....
"Burn a Live CD." Don't have a burner. "You burned the install CD, how can you not burn a Live?" 'Cause I'm posting from a different computer, moron. First one's bricked, remember?

Hmm, so nobody at work is willing to burn you a live CD? You must be as much of an assh*le at work as you are on the net.

If you act in an unpleasant manner you can expect to be ignored. People who may be able to help you are unlikely to do so. I've read your comments on the ubuntu forum (twice in fact) and I really think you behaved in a very poor way.

I've added you as a foe. I consider someone who behaves that way is unlikely to have anything to say that I would like to read.

There is no such thing as an "onboard RAID controller". They all use software RAID with a binary-only, and usually Windows-only, driver. In most cases, Linux's own "md" software RAID is faster and performs better than whatever binary driver they provide (and you get the Source Code; which for something as fundamental and important as a disk controller, should be the Law anyway.)

*If you have a copy of XP to use, guess what? The key that comes with the HP box is restricted to the version of Windows on the restore CD.

Yes, that's called a OEM key. They also have VLKs and Retail keys. Don't pirate.

How is it piracy to use a copy of the same version of the same OS on the same machine from a different CD? I understand that this is an antipiracy measure on Microsoft's part, but it got in the way of legitimate use here, as it not infrequently does.

* -Never heard of this happening. I think he means HP restore CDsI guess you've never been a reseller as I have. You get discounts, in exchange for following certain guidelines. One of the programs I participated in required the use of a restore CD in place of actual OEM disks. That was back in the 98/Me days though, I have no idea what the requirements are now for the volume resellers.* -That's a driver issue. No drivers, no access to weird/different hardware.True, but not making allowances fo

1. Microsoft has had this policy in the past, at least for consumer systems. I think they might have dropped it but I know it existed. Even if they didn't- many manufacturers (by their own choice) provide a quick restore CD with few options. He has a valid point that the CD was possibly poorly built, however if it was this way that suggests he was trying to install a server on a desktop/workstation box rather on a box designed as a server. HP makes the (often correct but quite inflexible) assumption tha

No. How a business tried to run Linux on a Promise controller. The moment I see Promise and Linux in one sentence it is bad news. I have at least 3 servers with onboard Promises which cannot be used because they fail in a variety of wonderfull ways. 2 high end tyan boards and one Intel OEM board. For two of them I cannot use the binary shite Promise ships as I run Debian with custom kernels and Linux driver does not recognise the contoller at all or does not handle errors correctly. For the Intel board I ca

I totally agree with you that there are other ways to skin this particular cat. However, the ability to use Microsoft's software to set up "impromptu" servers is part of the reason that Windows is so ubiquitous. A huge part of the Microsoft draw was that it took very little training or knowledge to set up simple file and print solutions for small businesses.

Ubuntu isn't such a bad solution either. It's probably less expensive (and more flexible) than a dedicated NAS. More reliable than trusting the bu

Dude, you can't slipstream in IDE drivers. Think about it. If you could get the machine to boot then you wouldn't need the extra IDE drivers in the first place, now would you? I reminds me of the episode of Cheers when Woodie bought the VCR (new technology at the time) and Sam asked him how he planned to hook it up. Woodie responded, "No problem Sam, it came with a VCR tape that explains the whole setup."

I suppose he could have built is own OEM bootable windows CD from the OEM HP CD and put in the dr

I can't believe they marked this poast as a troll. It's just a statement of facts (except for the end bit). Welcome to Slashdot where calling people on mindless MS bashing is trolling. Also, anyone that takes The Inquirer seriously needs to go out and by one of those bovine sized salt licks.

Slipstreaming is definately the way to go. I did that with my Sister-in-laws OEM copy (dell) and then gave her both discs- the 'old' Dell restore CD and the 'new' dell restore CD. Both worked just fine, just that the new version would install SP2 and all patches up to the date we slipstreamed it.

Yes, it took about 4 hours preparation time, but in the end it was quite worth it.

I don't think MS is to blame for this fiasco.... what do they say? Adjust the nut behind the lense?

Considering that he was trying to run XP as a server OS, something only the truly moronic would consider doing (incredibly, he blames Microsoft for HP's shitty restore CD and Promise's shitty driver CD), I very much doubt this sort of thing will be a shining beacon of hope to anyone.

Not that this has anything to do with Vista or Microsoft, and everything to do with one very silly man doing some very silly things indeed.